reachme

There is a totalled 2006 turbo S in Dallas on Copart for a buy it now price of $2,300
Reason for totalling? "MINOR DENT/SCRATCHES" and the pictures are not too worrying
https://www.copart.com/lot/55812808

I am so tempted. If anyone wants turbo S parts, tow parts, tan interior parts etc. or just wants to resurrect, this one should live.

slavie

That's a tough call - I'm gonna guess it's NOT an insurance company listing (insurance companies are usually just "pure sale", no BuyItNow), so it's coming from a Private company/individual and could be anything. No power b/c of no keys or larger problems? Who knows. You'll be $3k into it by the time you're out the door at Copart, so you have a good chance of making your money back in parts if you have the space and time, but car parts can take a loooooooooong time to sell.

At the very least check the VIN and get the auction history to make sure this is not somebody reselling it after stripping anything useful off, or finding out that it's been flooded.

Wisconsin Joe

With "no keys" plan on at least another $500 to get a new key and get it coded.

Anybody wanna bet it's got a 'steering column' fault?
Or something similar?

Without keys, it's going to be difficult to find much out without a fairly big investment.

user 83838290

Shiat, for 3k it makes sense for me to buy it and ship it to get an engine I can build and just swap in

slavie

...unless it's a Texas flood car that somebody who had no insurance (hence the clean title) just donated to a charity, in which case all of the electronics and interior would be completely worthless. You'd be left with shell and suspension to part to make some money back.

A private party could be literally anything. I'd say in-person inspection is absolutely mandatory on this one if you plan on making anything out of it.

MSRP on this one was $117k. Has XM radio LOL.

NelaK

I'd be very suspicious of a "Third Party" sale. The car has no keys so there's no way to know the condition of the engine. They are also hiding the fact that this is a flood car. Misleading you by claiming its just minor damage - the close up pictures of the bumper damage are probably intended to distract you from the real issues.

If you look at the carpet in the passenger footwell - that looks like mold to me. The leather also looks water damaged in the rear seats. That means the water reached at least as high as the rear bench which means all your interior electronics are toast and this car sat halfway submerged for a while. I'm pretty sure that's well above the air intakes for the engine so I'd guess the engine is also a goner. This car has been doctored to look better for auction.

This is the car's 5th time up for auction. Previous winning bids were:

Jan 17, 2019 Seller declined $1,350
Jan 10, 2019 Seller declined $1,550
Jan 3, 2019 Seller declined $1,550
Dec 27, 2018 Seller declined $1,150

You can probably find enough parts to sell off it to make a little profit, but I don't know if its worth the effort.

19psi

I would inspect it first. Passenger side may have blood spatter and congealed blood on the carpet. Looks like some red staining on the back seat too.

reachme

I've just learned a ton, thank you.
I didn't think you could call scratch damage what would be an obvious flood damage, I thought there was some accuracy but nothing beats seeing in person I guess

Vivid7

Makes for interesting conversation if he buys it.

slavie

Employees at Copart do not make any assumptions or perform any diagnosis beyond starting the car and seeing whether it will move under it's own power 3 feet forward and back. They only report on what they can see or what they're told by the seller. When the insurance company sends a vehicle some information is forwarded with the vehicle, such as a flood record, ACV and cost to repair, title status. When Joe Shmoe Nobody, aka Private Party Sale, brings in a vehicle and says "ain't nutin' rong with it", Copart will only report on what they can see - no visible damage, no fish swimming inside the car, engine won't start. What else do you want them to do? They're not in a position to speculate whether a stain on the carpet is dirt, mold, or jizz. I'm sure the car has dried up by now. Cars are sold as is, and it's up to the buyer to figure out what it is that they're buying.

This isn't even the worst "private party" bs I've seen - there was a Tesla once where the seller took out the battery and everything else valuable, then took out the struts and put in pieces of square tubing to prop the car up and set it to the "normal" ride height the car would've been if it had the battery in (buyers look for ride height in the pics to deduce whether the battery is still in the car, as the car will sit higher without it - common thing). Here's the video on YouTube about it (it's not in English, but the gist of the story is as I described), get to 2:10 mark:

Yup.

NelaK

Getting the auction history of a car is usually the most important thing after the pictures. Never trust anything else.

For a lot of the 'scam' listings what will happen is a car gets totaled, insurance sends it off to the auction - at this point the car looks like it did immediately following the accident. Usually the car will look like a mess, body panels are often left off by whatever body shop did the accident inspection and any reasonable buyer will look at it and think "Who would buy that? It'll never be repairable and probably not even worth it for parts". What happens next is auction flippers will buy the car, they will dress it up a bit. For example if body panels are hanging off, they'll reattach them, they'll try to straighten out panels, clean the car etc. Whatever they can do to make the car look better in the pictures for little to no money. If they reattach bumpers that had come off, suddenly the mangled frame rails are no longer visible in the pictures.. Things like that. At this point they will re-list the car and it will show up as a 'Third Party' sale now and sell for significantly more.

The best way to avoid getting screwed over by auction flippers is to find the previous auction history of the car. Ideally you'll find the original insurance auction with the original pictures that give you a much better idea of what happened. Other times you'll just find rejected winning bids. The car in this post for example had a number of them for around a thousand less than the asking price. That suggests to me that the professional salvage buyers are seeing enough red flags either in the pictures or because they saw the vehicle in person to not even commit $2300.

v10rick

Delete

JakeSwe

PDCC was not on my 2006 TTS, but it's there on my '09.

Staylo

It's a 955.

v10rick

Yes...thanks!